Sweaty Kansas City radio hot-taker Kevin Kietzman was pulled from his show this week, after clumsily referencing the drug abuse and 2012 death by overdose of Chiefs head coach Andy Reid’s oldest son in order to make a point about Reid’s performance as a football authority figure. Kietzman made the comments on Monday’s episode of Between the Lines; Tuesday the station announced his indefinite suspension; also on Tuesday Kietzman recorded and posted a mostly defensive and wildly unconvincing apology:
Between the Lines was handed over to guest hosts during Kietzman’s absence this week. Meanwhile, Kietzman made the rounds on local television, mostly to repeat the not-at-all-credible defense that he had “no intention of invoking any memories of [Reid’s] son that tragically died” when he said discipline “did not work out particularly well in [Reid’s] family life” and that Reid is “not good at fixing people” and “has had a lot of things go wrong” in his family. Friday afternoon Sportsradio 810 WHB announced their decision to “part ways” with Kietzman, who was previously listed on the station’s website as the Vice President-Sports Radio.
Union Broadcasting, Inc. President, Chad Boeger announced today that Union Broadcasting and Between the Lines host, Kevin Kietzman have mutually agreed to part ways and allow Kietzman to pursue other opportunities.
“We would like to thank Kevin for his dedicated service over the last 22 years,” Boeger said. “Kevin has been a valuable member of the Sports Radio 810 WHB team. We wish him all the best on his future endeavors and good luck moving forward.”
“It’s been my honor and privilege to host Between the Lines for the past 22 years and I’m proud of being a founding partner of this great local company that is so committed to our community,“ Kietzman said.
We want to thank our clients, partners and loyal listeners for their continued support.
As is consistent with our policy on personnel matters, Union Broadcasting will have no further comment.
To be clear, it was less Kietzman’s odious commentary that got him sacked, and more the public backlash. As demonstrated by Twitter user 50 Sent and the website Arrowhead Guys, this wasn’t even the first time in the last two weeks that Kietzman returned to this particular fetid well. In an earlier segment, Kietzman brought up Reid’s “criminal problems with his own family” in a rant wherein he described the Chiefs of the 1990s as a “heavy-handed, dirty, rotten group of thugs”:
Kietzman’s Andy Reid takes are arguably not even his most objectionable. Here he is railing against transgender athletes, Title IX, and what he describes as an influx of men competing athletically as women due to limitations in men’s athletic scholarships. Title IX is causing gender fluidity, according to Kietzman:
Kietzman is a shithead, and the sports talk radio world—a cesspool, to be sure—will be marginally better for his having been at least temporarily ejected from it.